Slight of Hand
by TheStuffofNightmares
Summary: Beautiful, talented and internationally famous, the Gleeful Twins appear to have the world in the palm of their hands. But that's not enough for Dipper Gleeful, oh no. He's after much, MUCH more, and nothing and no one is going to stand in his way. Reverse!Pines


**Prologue- The Terrible Two**

No one quite knew where they came from.

When they first appeared at the Orphanage at the age of two, everyone had been sympathetic, whispering quietly to themselves about how they couldn't understand how anyone could just abandon such adorable Twins. They had no names, no parents and nothing that hinted at them having existed before they came to the Orphanage, which gladly took the pair in. But it didn't take long for people to figure out that there was something different about the siblings.

It had started off innocently enough. Stealing sweets from the kitchens despite the lengths the cook went to hide them from the children so they didn't spoil their appetite. The Girl would sneak out of her bed, somehow bypassing two locked doors which only the nuns had the keys for and avoiding the night watch and only ever discovered in the morning, curled up at her brother's side in the boy's dormitory. Little things. Odd, but not earth shattering.

Then it escalated.

One day on the playground, a group of boys started harassing the Boy when the pair was on the see-saw, taunting him over his odd birthmark and calling him a girl because he only ever played with his sister. The Boy ignored them, but the Girl was visibly furious. One of the nuns intervened eventually, shooing the boys away. Obediently, they ran off to the slide. Not two minutes later, the entire play set collapsed without warning. The only ones on it were the boys, who were all unharmed save for scrapes and bruises, but all were obviously shaken by the strange accident. While the nun examined the wreckage to try and figure out what had happened, she spotted the Girl standing not far away, still watching the boys who had teased her brother with a strange look on her face. As if sensing her gaze, the girl calmly turned to meet the nun's eyes, startling her for a minute before the Girl flashed her an innocent smile before turning back to her brother, grabbing his hand and leading him away to the swings.

The nun couldn't help but feel there was something odd about the incident, but put it out of her mind, reassuring herself that it was just a strange coincidence.

As time went on though, it got harder and harder to ignore the terrible fates met by those who crossed the Twins. Little Cynthia Brown put gum in the Girl's hair. She was promptly put in time out as punishment as the sobbing child was led away to get her hair cut, leaving her brother seething in her wake. Thirty minutes later, when one of the nuns went to release Cynthia, she was shocked to find the girl screaming and wailing at the top of her lungs, her lovely blonde curls having fallen completely off of her head leaving the little girl bald. No one knew how it happened, but it was quite unsettling. More so when everyone noticed the Boy calmly playing with a race car not too far away. Then there was Fred Moore, who once pushed the Girl down and got her knees badly scraped and found himself with a broken leg not half an hour later after falling down the stairs. Or when Susan Price took the Boy's bike and was the victim of a hit and run while she was riding it, dying on impact.

Needless to say, the children and adults alike were terrified of the Twins. Unfortunately, no one could prove they were involved in any of the incidents, so when one of the Nuns frantically went to the police for help she was laughed out of the police station. On her way back to the Orphanage, a semi-truck ran a red light and T-boned her car. After that, the Twins had free reign to do whatever they pleased in the Orphanage. There was no one left who dared to stop them. Scared and desperate, the nuns began searching high and low for someone- anyone- who would take the Twins off of their hands. Eventually, they found a young couple interested in adopting the girl. It wasn't ideal for the Orphanage, but the nuns hoped that maybe by separating the two, the strangeness that surrounded them would stop. It was a low, deceitful thing to do, and chances were high that it wouldn't affect either twin's abilities in any way, but the nuns took the chance anyways.

To be safe, they had the Boy taken off the premises. He was the more dangerous twin anyways. The more violent 'accidents' usually seemed to happen when he was around and he never associated with anyone other than his twin. He and his sister had been in the Orphanage for nearly two years at that time, and only his sister had ever heard him speak. The girl, on the other hand, could be friendly and sweet, though it seemed like her twin discouraged her from getting too close to the other kids. Perhaps if they were separated, she could actually go on to live a normal, happy life. No one was really holding out the same hope for the Boy, though.

At first, everything went fine. The Boy was taken away to the doctor's office for a check-up, and about half an hour after he left the couple came and met with the Girl. They were obviously enchanted by the excited and imaginative child, who chattered endlessly as she played dolls with the woman and stuck scratch and sniff stickers to the man's cheeks. After a while though, the nuns became anxious. The Boy would be coming back soon, and they didn't want him here when his sister was leaving. There was no way he'd let them take her from him without a fight.

But when the time came to leave, the Girl dug her heels into the ground, insisting that she wasn't going anywhere without her brother. The couple looked visibly confused at this. No one had mentioned anything about the Girl having any siblings to them. Hastily, the nuns tried to play it off as though the Girl had an imaginary friend, who she pretended was her brother. The couple was still a little suspicious, but bought the nuns' story and tried to coax the Girl along by playing along and promising her toys, but the Girl wouldn't relent. Eventually, the nuns started to panic and bodily lifted the girl up to force her into the car, which resulted in the Girl sobbing loudly and protesting, only to be ignored.

It was a lot harder, though, to ignore the doors, which quite inexplicably refused to open when the nuns tried to leave with the Girl. The same went for the back doors, and all the windows. As the couple stood there, shocked and confused, the nuns desperately tried to force their way out of the Orphanage as the Girl cried loudly for her brother. All their efforts were in vain, though. The Orphanage remained firmly shut up until the Boy suddenly burst through the front door, chest heaving and eyes flashing murder as he glared at the nuns before bypassing them in order to tend to his sister. As soon as the Girl saw him, she latch on to the Boy, sobbing at the top of her lungs as he hugged her back soothingly before leading her away to a room in the back, which he locked behind them.

Not that he had anything to worry about. The couple ran off the second they could without saying a word to the nuns, obviously freaked out by what had just happened and clearly not interested in adopting any more. A few minutes later, the nun in charge of looking after the Boy at the doctor's office returned to the Orphanage, whispering in terror about how the boy knew the very second his sister started getting upset, and telling them that he'd run back to the Orphanage on foot from the doctor's office, some twenty minutes away. She had almost been too afraid to get in her car, certain that she'd meet with the same fate as the nun who went to the police about the strange incidents surrounding the four year olds, but apparently the Boy was more interested in getting to his sister then he was in revenge on the nuns who tried to separate them in the first place.

How long that would last was anyone's guess.

The nuns spent the next few days hardly daring to breathe as they waited for the axe to drop. All eyes were on the Twins, watching fearfully for their next move. The girl seemed happily oblivious to it all, but any time someone turned their gaze towards the pair the Boy would meet their eyes with a steely look of his own. Soon, it seemed to say. And the person watching would turn and run as if the hounds of Hell were snapping at their heels.

Then one day, a week after their botched attempt to separate the Twins, a strange man in a straw hat wearing a tacky Hawaiian shirt suddenly approached the pair. Usually, the nuns would chase such a suspicious man away from their charges, but they were all too scared to even get near the Twins. Thus, they merely watched warily from a distance as the man communicated with the pair for nearly half an hour. No one had a clue what he was saying, but the Twins looked interested, the Boy especially. Eventually, the man left with a cheery wave, heading back the way he came.

That night, the Twins went to bed as usual. In the morning, neither one could be found anywhere on the premises.

The Nuns carefully looked all around for the pair and reluctantly considered calling the police before nixing the idea completely. The Twins might have been their responsibility by law, but if they were gone then the nuns didn't want them back. The legal ramifications would be well worth the peace of mind at finally being free of the eerie pair and their strange, demonic powers. The nuns and children alike breathed a sigh of relief at the knowledge that the Twins were finally out of their hair, and after some time continued on the way they had before the mysterious pair had found their way to the Orphanage's doorstep.

A week after the Twins left, a fire suddenly broke out at the Orphanage in the middle of the night. The building was burned right down to the foundations, and no one inside it survived. No one had a clue how the fire started or how it had gotten so bad so fast, but nearly fifty people died in that night including, everyone assumed, the strange Twins who had no past and no names, but possessed terrifying mystical powers which they would not hesitate to use.

Eight years later, Mabel and Dipper Gleeful hit the road with their travelling magic show, The Mystery Twin's Tent of Telepathy.


End file.
